FORGOTTEN MEMORIES
‘The future depends on the forgotten memories’ Koen Vanmechelen
When encountering an ancient civilization, the DNA of your own evolution - as an individual, a member of a tribe, and part of a connectome - rises from your imagination. The sum of your imagined genes is the reincarnation of your new existence. In its desire to live, humanity has developed an ellipse, moving from ashes to ashes. In our frenzied quest for eternal life, the preservation of the physical body has become essential. This transformation is giving the human-animal the illusion of infinity.
The contemporary approach to life is gradually ignoring the need for a physical body and is focusing more and more on the ancient ritual of restitution to nature. With this propensity, spiritual power is palpable again, which allows us to linger in a beautiful world of fantasies.
Hybrid images carry elements that were never exposed to the eye but remained dormant. Underlying DNA that never had the opportunity to develop due to circumstances and context is eagerly waiting for the desired conditions.
The following tetrad of materials is vital in this exposition: marble, bronze, preserved life, and transparent glass. Glass is the invisible element that carries the past and the future. It is elusive, fragile, and hard. To whom or what the human species owes its origin or future is an enigma. The fact is that fiction does not exist as long as its different parts have not materialized as a reality. It is only a flash of an explosion that can fuse those parts together into a new paradigm. A big bang, a microsecond of illumination as described in Quantum Physics. A pure light it is, full of hybridity. Scattered far and wide are birth, strength, fertility, fragility, diversity, immunity, and above all, an abundance of temptation. The future is based on ancient times and reflects the simultaneity of every moment.
We are the others. Then is now is later. Remembering is predicting.
Koen Vanmechelen
EXHIBITION FACTS
Solo exhibition of Koen Vanmechelen at the Museo Barracco
Director and curator: Marina Mattei supported by Adriano Berengo
Museo di scultura antica Barracco Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 168 00186 Roma RM, Italy
For more information please visit the website of Museo Barracco